Miller, Ed. Smallll Stakes No-Limit Holdem

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can exploit you by checking and calling more frequently with decent made hands.

Deviate from the generic optimal strategy only consciously and only when it benefits you.

Principles For Continuation Betting

Continuation betting is a crucial aspect of any no-limit strategy. Whether to try a continuation bet after missing the flop can be a somewhat complex decision, but at its heart is a simple trade-off. By betting, you’re more likely to win pots where your opponent flopped a weak hand. But you’re also more likely to lose extra money in pots where your opponent flopped strong. You want to balance these two factors to make the most profitable strategy.

Principle 1: Just Do It

Very strong opponents require you to utilize a measured and nuanced continuation betting strategy. Fortunately, the vast majority of opponents you’ll encounter at $1–$2 are not very strong. As a result, the basic continuation betting strategy for $1–$2 can be summed up thusly:

Just do it.

As we said before, the main trade-off for continuation betting is that, by betting you’ll win more pots against bad hands, but you’ll lose more money against good hands. Your typical opponents at $1– $2 (even the “good” ones) fold too frequently to pressure, and on top of that they don’t win as much as they could with their strong hands. So by continuation betting against these players, you’ll succeed more often than you should, and you’ll lose less on average than you should when you get caught. Both factors make betting more attractive than it would be against a very strong opponent.

So we recommend you continuation bet frequently, and pull back on the aggression only against opponents who exploit your strategy.

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As a baseline, you could bet nearly every time in heads-up pots and perhaps 70–80 percent of the time in three-handed pots. In fourhanded or more pots, you should be more measured, but you can still profitably make c-bets on many dry flops.

Example 1. Your 27/9 opponent limps under the gun, and you make it $10 on the button with A♠6♠. The blinds fold, and the limper calls.

The flop is J♦9♠8♦. Your opponent checks.

Bet about $15. This flop is coordinated and leaves you with few prospects to improve. It hits many of the hands your opponent might have limped in with. Overall this situation is relatively inhospitable for a continuation bet.

Yet we think you should bet anyway. The flop misses many of your opponent’s hands, just as it also hits many of them. And often when your opponent has hit the flop and does call, he’ll have hit the flop weakly, holding just a draw or a weak pair. Depending on the turn and river cards and action, you may be able to steal a fair percentage of pots on a later street. Your opponent plays weakly enough that you should try a continuation bet even in this relatively poor scenario.

Example 2. You open for $7 from under the gun with A♣Q♠. A tight, somewhat nitty player calls on the button. The big blind, a 38/14 player, also calls.

The flop comes J♣9♠4♠. The big blind checks.

Go ahead and try a continuation bet. A bet of about $12 into this $22 pot should work fairly well. Usually the nitty player will hold a pocket pair, or a suited ace or a connector, and many of those hands have missed this flop.

The loose player in the blind plays a lot of trash and therefore usually makes weak hands. If the nitty player folds, and the loose player calls, you will have position and often have a good opportunity to steal the pot later in the hand.

A slightly reckless continuation betting style gets the money in small stakes no-limit. Your opponents, by and large, won’t make the adjustments necessary to exploit you. They’ll struggle to cope with your aggression. And it’s no big deal if you take it a little too far and

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throw out a dubious bet here and there. Your slightly over-aggressive style will earn you extra money on your good hands, and this benefit alone can be enough to pay for your mistaken bets. Overall, you’re much better off continuation betting a little too often than not betting often enough.

Principle 2: Don’t Use A Sledgehammer When A Slightly Smaller Sledgehammer Will Suffice

Overall, the strategy is not subtle: Bet the flop and dare your opponents to try to defend themselves. But you can employ a little subtlety in your bet sizing. You don’t have to fire the pot every time it’s your turn to bet. Often a smaller bet will work just as well.

Your opponents will often think in binary terms on the flop—either they hit the flop, or they didn’t. If they are feeling like they didn’t hit the flop, they may be willing to fold even to a very small bet. Whereas if they feel like they hit the flop, they may be likely to call a pot-sized bet, since in absolute terms, even pot-sized flop bets tend to be relatively small.

The result of this tendency for binary thinking on the flop is that half pot bets are often nearly as good at stealing the pot as larger bets.

Some scenarios in particular promote binary thinking. If the flop comes K22 rainbow, for instance, your opponents will either have strong hands, or they’ll have “nothing.” Only medium pocket pairs like 77 can fall into the ambiguous middle.

Thus, there’s little reason to bet full pot on a dry flop like this one, even if you happened to flop a strong hand. Limiting your c-bets to half pot on dry flops like this one will have you winning nearly as often as a full pot bet would, while losing just half as much when things go wrong. In fact, smaller bets often work well too.

Another situation where binary thinking often takes hold is in pots that were 3-bet preflop. In these bloated pots, your opponents will often tend to evaluate their hands as either good enough to stack off with or not good enough. Since the pots are large compared to the remaining stacks, there’s little room to maneuver, to chase a weak draw, or to employ any wait-and-see tactics like floating.

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You can harness this binary “to commit or not to commit” thinking to your advantage when c-betting by choosing a small bet size. Sure, blasting a pot-sized $50 bet at a 3-bet pot will tend to get your opponents off their marginal hands. But firing $25 or $30 will often do the trick nearly as well. These bets are small compared to the pot, but they are large enough compared to the stack sizes that your opponents will usually revert to a fit-or-fold strategy.

When the pot is small compared to the starting stacks, and the board is fairly coordinated (also called a “wet” board), binary thinking begins to break down. The bets are relatively small, and many hands can catch a weak piece of the flop—gutshots, bottom pairs, overcards, backdoor flush draws, and so forth. So in these situations, you should tend to make somewhat larger continuation bets with an eye toward following up with a possible second barrel to force opponents off all their marginal flop calling hands.

Example 3. A 20/17 player opens from the button for $7. You 3- bet to $24 in the big blind with 3♣3♠. Your opponent calls. You know that this player tends to 4-bet with his premium hands, rarely choosing to trap with them. And you also know that he tends to adopt a fit-or-fold strategy postflop after calling a 3-bet.

The flop comes 9♠7♦2♦. You can bet about $25 into this $49 pot. That bet size should be enough to get your opponent off of his whiffed overcard hands like KQ. And if your opponent happened to catch a lucky set or big flush draw on you, you’ll extract yourself from the situation without losing over a quarter of your stack in the process.

Principle 3: Back Off Against Strong Players

Occasionally you will come up against a player who will try to use your prolific continuation betting against you. Watch out for these signs:

A normally-aggressive player who starts to play a trapping game against you with hands like top pair or an overpair. For example, you 3-bet preflop, half-pot bet the flop, half-pot bet the turn, and shove the river, and the player calls and shows pocket aces. If this

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is a player who would typically put in action sooner with pocket aces, he may be adjusting to your aggression by trapping more often.

A player who begins checkraising the flop frequently against you. Generally speaking, the flop checkraise is a play used sparingly by most small stakes no-limit players. If one player seems to be checkraising you much more frequently than usual, there’s a good chance he’s trying to exploit your weak continuation bets.

A player who begins floating your flop bets frequently or raising with position either on the flop or on a later street. As with the previous sign, good players can add more floating to their games against a player who fires off too many c-bets.

If someone seems to be taking one of the above countermeasures against your continuation betting, you should bet fewer hands. In particular, consider the following guidelines:

Check more often when out of position than when in position.

It’s much easier for your opponents to exploit your loose continuation betting when they have position on you. If you 3-bet from the blinds and a tough player calls you (someone who is likely either to try to trap you or to try to steal the pot), you should frequently check the flop, and you should check with your bad and good hands alike. Checking bad hands saves money, and checking good hands reverses the trapping play on your opponents if they try to steal the pot after your show of weakness.

Against a good player, you can check more than half of your out of position hands on the flop. When you have position you should still be betting more than half of your hands. Also, when you do c-bet from out of position and are called, check the turn more with your made hands. This punishes floaters.

Check more often when the board connects well with your opponent’s hand range. When TAG players call your preflop raises, you can make some assumptions about their hand ranges. They likely have a big card hand, a small or medium pocket pair, or a connected hand (usually suited). Therefore, your continuation bets will succeed less frequently on coordinated and big card flops, and you should be willing to check more often. As when out of position, you should also check some good hands on those flops to balance your range.

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Be more willing to rebluff. Say you raise preflop, and a 26/24 opponent calls out of the blind. The flop comes K52 rainbow. He checks, you bet a little more than half-pot, and he checkraises half the pot. Sometimes (but not always) you should reraise as a bluff. Since the flop is dry and hits relatively few hands, your opponent can be testing you in this situation with nothing. By occasionally rebluffing, you help protect yourself from being outright exploited.

Also, when out of position, instead of continuation betting on a dry or semi-coordinated board, you could sometimes check with the intention of checkraising as a bluff. Deploying this play occasionally will prevent your opponent from showing an automatic profit by playing a “bet when checked to” strategy.

Earlier, we made the case for keeping bet sizes small when bluffing. But aggressive opponents will sometimes pounce on weak bets harder than strong bets. When this is the case, bet larger when you don’t want your opponent to play back at you, and bet smaller when you do—at least until he begins to figure this pattern out.

Again, you shouldn’t have to use these countermeasures too often when playing at $1–$2. Most players at that level aren’t sophisticated enough to begin trapping you or bluffing and rebluffing you to defend themselves against your aggressive flop betting. But if you think you’ve found such a player in your game, you now know what to do about it.

Ace-High Boards And Continuation Betting

In some ways, an ace is the ultimate scare card. It’s obvious, and if you don’t have one, it’s very threatening. If you raise preflop and an ace flops, your opponents may think it likely you have an ace. This fact can work both for and against you.

Say you open preflop on the button with T♣9♣ and get called by an unknown big blind. The flop comes A♦7♣5♠. Your opponent checks. You should certainly continuation bet here against nearly all opponents. The big blind doesn’t need a great hand to defend his blind against your button raising range, so a large percentage of his hands

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won’t include an ace. If he holds a hand like Q♦T♠, he’ll be concerned that you have an ace and that he’s drawing slim. If the flop had been J♦7♣5♠, your opponent might choose to peel on the flop with his three-straight and overcard. But with the ace on board, usually he’ll just fold.

So when your opponent begins the hand with a wide preflop range, he’s more likely than usual to fold to a continuation bet on an acehigh flop, particularly a ragged ace-high flop.

However, when your opponent has connected with the flop, he’s less likely than usual to let go to a flop bet. He’s also less likely to fold on the turn. If he holds an ace, he’s unlikely to fold on the flop or turn. Many players will routinely call two streets with any ace. And even those who usually fold weak aces to a second barrel will sometimes spike their kicker or decide to look you up, particularly if they think you’re aggressive.

If your opponent doesn’t hold an ace, but has connected with the flop in another way, he’s also less likely to let go because he’ll assume he has implied odds. Since you’re the preflop raiser, you’re marked with a possible ace. Someone with bottom or middle pair will often call the flop trying to spike two pair or trips and to win a big pot. Likewise, someone with a gutshot or other weak draw will often peel to try to outdraw you. These weak hands will likely fold if they miss when you bet the turn and river.

But it often doesn’t pay to double and triple barrel ace-high flops when called on the flop. First, you will often be up against an ace, and most players with an ace will be loathe to fold. Second, your opponents looking to draw out on an ace want implied odds, and by double and triple barreling, that’s what you’re offering them. They think it’s profitable to draw because if they hit, they can get you for turn and river bets. If you triple barrel them, they get what they want.

Triple barreling ace-high flops can set you up for a double whammy. You pay off your opponents who have aces, and you sometimes also pay off opponents looking for implied odds. This effect tends to make running big bluffs on ace-high flops unprofitable.

So when the flop comes ace-high and you’ve raised preflop, usually continuation bet because your opponents are unlikely to call

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unless they’ve connected fairly well with the flop. But if your opponent does call the flop and your hand is still garbage on the turn, usually give up.

When you’ve raised preflop, ace-high flops are prime candidates for a continuation bet. But if your flop bet is called and you still have garbage on the turn, continuing the bluff will usually be unprofitable.

Giving up on the turn with most of your garbage hands opens up a possible strategy to exploit you. Your opponent can call the flop with any pair or even king-high, and then fold if you bet the turn and take the free showdown if you give up. To balance your turn checks with garbage, you should sometimes also check the turn with decent hands. Weak aces and pocket pairs just below the ace are good hands to check back. If you check back a decent hand and your opponent checks the river, you can consider value betting. Your opponent might mistake your turn check for giving up on a bluff and look you up light. Finally, you should balance these value bets against thinking players by bluffing sometimes with the garbage hands you checked back.

To summarize, usually check the turn and river with nothing after getting called on an ace-high board. To punish opponents who try to get cheap showdowns on you, sometimes play your aces with a bet- check-bet pattern, extracting bonus value on the river. Against especially perceptive opponents who will decode the bet-check-bet line as strength, throw in the occasional bet-check-bet as a bluff. Against most players this final measure of balance is unnecessary.

For instance, say you’re playing $1–$2 with $200 stacks. You open for $6 on the button with T♣9♣ and an unknown big blind calls. The flop comes A♦7♣5♠. Your opponent checks, you bet $8, and he calls. (Your flop c-bets need not be large on ragged ace-high flops because your opponent can have few marginal hands. Either he’s got something worth calling with or he’s got nothing and he’s worried about drawing dead to an ace.) The turn is the 4♦. Your opponent

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checks, and you check. The river is the Q♥. Your opponent bets $16, and you fold.

Your opponent called your flop continuation bet and you didn’t improve on the turn. Furthermore, if your opponent held a small straight draw on the flop or a suited connector that flopped bottom or middle pair, the turn card improved him. This is a straightforward situation to give up.

Now say you’re playing the same game and open for $6 on the button with A♣3♠. The big blind calls, and the flop comes A♦7♣5♠. Your opponent checks, you bet $8, and he calls. The turn is the T♦. Your opponent checks. You can check this hand back sometimes to balance your checks when you’re giving up. Then if your opponent checks again on the river, you can often bet 1/3 to 2/3 pot for value on the river, aiming to get calls from unimproved pocket pairs and sevens and fives. Since you checked back the turn, and since you often check back garbage on the turn, often they’ll suspect a bluff and look you up.

If your opponent bets the river, you should call against some players and fold against others. It depends on their bluffing frequencies and willingness to bet less than an ace for value.

Above we noted that ace-high flops tend to be poor to doublebarrel because you’ll be giving value to aces and giving implied odds to drawing hands. One might then wonder, wouldn’t that be the case on every flop? By double barreling, we’re offering value to top pair and implied odds to drawing hands whether the top card is an ace or a ten. It’s true, but ten-high flops have three factors that make continuing a bluff more attractive:

Opponents are more likely to peel light on ten-high flops than they are on ace-high flops. Someone with queen-jack or ace-eight might call a flop bet on a ten-high flop, whereas queen-jack and king-high are less likely to peel an ace-high flop. Your opponents will fold a larger percentage of their range on an ace-high flop, but their calling ranges will tend to be stronger and therefore less profitable to continue to bluff into. Players will call ten-high flops with a weaker range, and therefore future bluffs will tend to be more profitable.

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Overcards are the natural scare cards for top pair. Overcards can come to a flopped pair of tens, but no overcards can come to a flopped pair of aces. Therefore, if you bluff a ten-high flop and get called by a ten, there’s a good chance you’ll catch a scare card later on and have a good bluffing opportunity. That is unlikely to happen on an ace-high flop.

Your bluffing hands will tend to have more equity when called on a ten-high flop than on an ace-high one. Say you have queen-nine and continuation bet a ten-high flop. If you get called by a ten, you have overcard outs. If you get called by an ace on an ace-high flop, you have almost no equity when called.

Aces On The Turn

You raise preflop with pocket deuces and get called by a blind. The flop comes ten-high and ragged. Your opponent checks, you bet, and he calls. The turn is an ace. This might seem at first like the ideal bluffing card. It’s a decent bluffing card, but it’s not ideal. There are two main problems:

As we mentioned before, people call ten-high flops fairly often with ace-high hands. These hands have now improved, but will still likely check to you.

Much of the time when someone calls out of position on a ten-high ragged flop, they will have flopped a pair. Since many people play ace-rag hands often, the turn will have made them aces up more likely than it might at first seem. For instance, on a T73 flop, you’ll frequently be up against A7, A3, 87, or 76. You’re unlikely to be up against 72 or 93.

Nevertheless, the ace will be scary to someone who holds just a smaller pair, and turn bluffs will succeed fairly often. You can also bluff a turn ace if you chose not to c-bet the flop. Your opponent will suspect that you checked behind on the flop with ace-high and then spiked your ace on the turn.

However, if you actually hold an ace, especially with a weak kicker, then often it’s better to check it back on the turn rather than